The field of electronic imaging technology has been used extensively to capture images in a two dimensional form. However, this technology has been greatly restricted because of its limited ability of producing an image which is focused to only one point in the target scene. The prior art describe technologies wherein images that are produced tend to lack depth resulting in segments of the image being in focus while other segments are out of focus, producing an inconsistent or blurry image. Innovations in this field have focused on image resolution and omni-directional image capturing methods in order to produce congruent images.
One such innovation in this field is described in the article Light Field Photography with a Hand-held Plenoptic Camera by Ren Ng et al. The article discloses a phenoptic camera that samples the 4D light field on its sensor in a single photographic exposure. This ability is achieved by inserting a microlens array between the sensor and main lens. Each microlens measures not just the total amount of light deposited at that location, but how much light arrives along each ray. By being able to resort the measured rays of light to where they would have terminated in slightly different, synthetic cameras, sharp photographs focused at different depths can be computed. The system described in this article allows for the measure of depth of an object and allows for computing synthetic photographs from different view points; however, the system does not allow for congruent image production wherein objects at different distances are all in focus within one image. Further, the resolution of the image taken by such a camera is limited by the diameter of the microlenses used.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method for enabling congruent image production wherein objects at different distances are in focus in a single image.